Conventionally, mounters are available as apparatuses for mounting electronic components (hereafter referred to simply as “components”) onto a board such as a printed circuit board.
Furthermore, in recent years, there is a mounter which includes plural carrier conveyors that are arranged in parallel, and which performs, in parallel, component mounting onto boards that are carried by the respective carrier conveyors. Specifically, there is a mounter which has plural lanes which are carrying paths for mounting components onto a board, and which performs component mounting operations in parallel.
By using a mounter having plural lanes, the number of boards produced per unit area of component-mounted boards can be increased more than when using a mounter having only one lane.
Furthermore, focusing on one mounting head of a mounter having plural lanes, for example, when component mounting for a board on a lane ends, it is possible, without waiting for the next board on such lane, to start mounting components onto a board on another lane.
In other words, it is possible to reduce the time consumed in carrying boards. Expressed differently, it is possible to reduce mounting head idle time.
Technology regarding such a mounter having plural lanes is disclosed. For example, there is disclosed a technique concerning a production line in which plural mounters, each having two lanes, are connected (see Patent Citation 1, for example).
According to this technique, a program is used to control whether each of the two lanes of the respective mounters is to be used as a mounting stage for performing component mounting or as a bypass for performing only carrying.
With this, a subsequent board can overtake a preceding board and thus it becomes possible to support various mounting formats without providing a bypass-dedicated board-carrying mechanism.
Furthermore, there is disclosed a technique for matching the insertion order and carry-out order of boards in a mounter having two lanes (see Patent Citation 2, for example).
According to this technique, allocating conveyors which allocate boards between the two lanes are placed before and after the mounter. Furthermore, the carry-out order when boards are carrying-out to the downstream-side by the allocating conveyor on the carry-out side is determined according to the carry-in order of the boards to the mounter, used by the allocating conveyor on the carry-in side.
With this, the carrying order of boards in the production lot can be maintained according to the first in, first out rule.    Patent Citation 1: Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2003-204191    Patent Citation 2: Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2003-204192